


A Softer World

by The_Birds_And_Bees



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Del Toro is there, F/F, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, absolutely correct and not bullshitted computer speak, alphys POV, more tags to come, my friends complained that this called them out so I guess Alphys is IC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 09:59:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Birds_And_Bees/pseuds/The_Birds_And_Bees
Summary: It’s possible that coding a chat room into what appears to be the very fabric of reality isn’t the best idea Alphys has ever had.But it’s a Friday night, so fuck it.





	A Softer World

**Author's Note:**

> For all of my loves at Christmas, and into the coming year- this entire story is for you. Thank you for making my world such a beautiful place.

* * *

 

**I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.**

* * *

If someone asked her, Alphys would tell them that the worst part about being unemployed was all the spare time she had- and all the freedom to dabble in all sorts of things she shouldn’t that came along with it.

Or she wouldn’t. Because- that would really undermine the impossible reality many faced whilst looking for employment after being laid off; humans and monsters alike out of pocket and facing growing debt, unable to provide for their families. The threat of homelessness looming, the invisible timer that made them less and less desirable to employ the longer they went without a job, the crippling impact to their self-confidence, their sense of self, their mental health, the-

Oh god she’s doing it again and it’s only been like, five minutes and she’s already spiralling, Undyne would be so disappointed if she knew and she’d probably DUMP HER and she’d be ALL ALONE, FOREVER, EXILED TO LATE NIGHT NOODLE DINNERS WITH AN ANIME FIGURINE FOR ALL ETERNITY-

“O-oh my _god._ ” Alphys stutters, throwing up her hands. The pen she’d forgotten she was holding sails across the room, bouncing off the wall with a definitive clink of plastic against plaster which says that… well, it says she threw her pen away. Again.

“Look, if you think I’m coming to get you, you’ve- you’ve got another thing coming.” She tries very hard to sound annoyed; but to her own ears, it sounds more like nervous resignation.

It’s a work in progress. If her girlfriend was here, she’d- well, Undyne would make sure she repeated herself, as many times as it took until Alphys actually sounded annoyed. And then they’d smooch.

And Undyne would suplex her pen for daring to fly away from her and Alphys would find a new pen while Undyne scrubbed ink out of the carpet and that’s the story of why they had to promise to replace the carpet at the end of their lease- also the kitchen, but suplexed pens really isn’t the reason why. Smooches aren’t really involved, either.

They should be.

Can’t be right now, because Undyne isn’t currently destroying their kitchen. She’s not even in their kitchen, or their bedroom, or the apartment. She has a job. Her job requires her to travel sometimes, in order to protect the royal family wherever they require it. Even if that means going overseas for two weeks for some summit on climate change and not apologizing to your girlfriend for missing not one, but _FOUR_ movie nights.

Being unemployed means-

Something else. For Alphys, it meant that she had to voluntarily give up her position as Royal Scientist in return for not going to jail because, ironically, humans and monsters have similar laws when it comes to severe breaches of scientific ethics. It starts with _lock up_ and ends with _throwing away the key._ There’d been several stipulations added; she’s not allowed to work within a scientific field for the next five years- never again in relation to SOULs, which, she supposes someone thought was an apt punishment?

Because her expertise is biology and not, oh, engineering, or anything.

It’s fine. Her sparse… uh, “lifestyle” Underground meant that she’d saved more money than she knew what to do with. Even if she hadn’t, hundreds of companies had already recognized her worth in the field she’d actually studied in, with some offers… kind of tempting, actually. Working with human internet providers, phone operations; big companies with big paychecks to go with them. If she wanted, there was work to do, there. Jobs she’d probably be really happy in.

If...she wanted to work.

Trusted herself to work.

“...Spiralling.” A soft chide, but it’s… it’s no use. She’s just been staring blankly at the television all day, pen in hand. Blank notebook on her lap that was supposed to be filled with all the ideas she’d conceived of potential projects to keep her occupied until she was inspired to work on her next, big thing- until she found that… Spark. The same Spark that felt like- like when she’d first started building Mettaton’s body.

It’s been ten hours. Her mind, and the notebook, are empty. And she’s thrown about three packets of pens at the wall.

Might as well fill her stomach then; at least _something_ wouldn’t be empty. Sliding off the couch, Alphys sighs as the notebook slides to the ground, opting to step over it as she shuffles into the kitchen to look for something vaguely edible. Opening the fridge, she looks over the contents of each shelf- and then again, for good measure.

And again, because absolutely nothing interests her, but she hasn’t eaten all day, and she’d like to pretend for a few more seconds that she’s actually going to cook something amazing and not pull out cup noodles for the fourth night in a row.

…

She’s gonna pull out cup noodles for the fourth night in a row.

“You’re just a metaphor for my life right now.” She tells the cup. It doesn’t answer. Putting on the kettle, she tugs the paper lid open with little ceremony- and of course, there’s a spot where the glue is a little tougher so the lid just rips in half and now it looks even more pathetic than it did at the start. “...Yeah. B-big mood, pal. Might as well be- be trash, inside and out, right?”

Wow, she’s lucky Undyne isn’t here. If she was, she’d be roaring. Alphys would be froggit marched all the way to the sports oval five blocks over, forced to run a hundred laps, hooting about how great she is. Papyrus would be there. Sans would inevitably follow, giving her a friendly face to escape to when Undyne inevitably forgot why they’d gone there in the first place in favor of competing against his brother at running laps or throwing the biggest bullet over the goals whilst Sans made stupid, pun-laced commentary and she-

Was completely preoccupied out of this funk she gets into almost on a weekly basis and feel better about herself.

“You know what? I don’t even want you anymore.” Leaving the kettle to turn off on its own (electric kettles are amazing, no matter what Undyne says- even perfect girlfriends could be perfectly **wrong** ) she snatches something else out of the cupboard; a food much easier to consume. With three packets of strawberry pocky in hand, she almost goes right back to the couch, but- no. No, she needs to look at something that isn’t a television and a poster covered wall, even if it’s just a different poster covered wall.

Dining room it is.

Although, she’ll have to make some space, first. Everyone has a messy space; for Asgore, it’s his garden shed. Toriel (from her rare experiences of stopping by her place briefly when Undyne needed to stop in for work) stacked her paperwork on the arms of her favorite chair. Last Alphys had seen, she’d added a coffee table to increase the amount of surface space. Sans and Papyrus had… Sans’ room.

And they had their dining table. Piled high with bits of armor, abandoned science projects, training equipment, probably important paperwork that they really shouldn’t lose, at least fifty unwatched anime series, it’s… it’s a bit of a task, but you know what?

She’s got absolutely nothing going for her right now, so why not. It’s productive! It’d be cool for Undyne to come home to! She can do it. She can clear off one, whole chair for one of them to sit at with barely enough cleared table space to put a few packets of pocky, it’ll be! Great!

“...Huh. I th-thought we’d already watched you. And um. Binned you? Your plot is empty- yeet.” A dvd case clatters against the wall behind her- good start. “And we really need to- to know where you are? Eight months and we haven’t even filed away the damn l-lease…”

For every important thing she uncovers, there’s ten pieces of trash. Stopping to collect a roll of bin bags from the kitchen helps a bit, one filled and tied up to lay somewhere on the floor- then three. Spare pieces of armor are relocated to the first spare room (Undyne would want to polish them before they go away), dvds are stacked, paperwork is organized into piles that vaguely relate to each other, then stacked- before she knows it, almost half the table and two chairs are clear and organized. Wow.

Except, uh, for that really big box that had gotten buried under everything else.

“Y-you’re… uh. W-what are you, again?” Is this- hers? Did they forget to unpack a box when they moved in, lost to time and every volume of One Piece? Dragging it closer requires a bit of effort, so clearly there’s something in it? Tape is dealt with as it should be- deft claws neatly hooking into sticky plastic and slicing cleanly down the center of the seal. Claws. They’re really convenient when you… haven’t trimmed them in a while. Months. “Time to show me your secrets. All your contents are belong to-- me?”

They actually do belong to her. It’s- that computer kit. The one she’d ordered the first week they moved in.

“Oh my god, I. I totally forgot.” It arrived the day of her employment severance and she’d just thrown it on the table for a day when she wasn’t the living embodiment of sweat. It was just a personal project- something to test the current technology of humans and its adaptability to magic.

“...Oh my god.” It was also going to be a housewarming gift for Frisk when they moved into their first home with Toriel. Which they did. Months ago.

“Oh my _god_ IspentthousandsonthisandIjustforgotaboutit.” Like she’d dug it out of the **trash** but she DIDN’T and she still FORGOT ABOUT IT LIKE THE TRASHFIRE SHE EMBODIES ON A DAILY BASIS AND SHE’S GOING TO BUILD IT. RIGHT NOW.

The last, unopened packet of pocky abandoned on the table beside her, Alphys thanks her lucky stars that everything she ordered is actually there- according to the invoice, since she’s not trusting her stupid brain to recall it all. With all the parts laid out, it’s just a matter of running to the study (second spare room, technically, but if they thought a bed was going to fit in there with all the other stuff she needed for her work they were fooling themselves- even one that folded up into a conveniently easy to draw cube), collecting her tools and setting out to assemble- like a boss.

Time becomes a collection of sounds, from that point- mostly the one sound. Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: the Movie has an autoplay feature, which she lets run as it deems fit. The movie plays all the way through four and a half times before Alphys is satisfied that the kit is solid; without any additional tinkering on her part, it runs like it should. Then it’s a matter of taking it all apart to replace a few bits and bobs with pieces of her own. Additional wiring to accommodate a self-sustaining magical current, a MiFi adaptor for accessing the Undernet- the usual stuff. Other parts had to be treated for temperature durability (a step she’d forgotten once when helping out a Vulkin). They’re left to set as the world outside takes on a deep shade of blue that heralds the pre-dawn, and another all-nighter.

At least she’d been working through this one. Rubbing at weary eyes with the backs of her hands, Alphys slouches down in her chair, mentally checking off the steps thus far. It’s all pretty much done, at this stage- once the motherboard is reprogrammed to accommodate the additional, magical elements, it would all work like, uh.

Like magic. Heh.

“O-okay. _Okay._ Just gotta… set this up and- let it run through.” She could probably code the changes in her sleep with how often she’s had to make each change manually, but why do that when she could just execute a command to do it for her, _and_ sleep? That’s like, three, four hours of productivity she doesn’t even need to be conscious for. All she has to do is get out her laptop.

A laptop. One of several she’d refurbished throughout the years to suit the needs of the Underground, but hadn’t parted with for one reason or another. Memory restrictions, usually. The only thing harder to find in the Underground than a mostly functional computer was USBs and external hard drives.... Which is why she has three laptops dubbed ‘research’, and seven called ‘anime’.

...Anime #5 should be fine for this, actually. Humming along to the credits of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: the Movie, Alphys returns to the dining room with laptop in tow, charger cord dragging along the ground behind her. Yelping, when her foot gets caught on a plastic bag that some **MORON** left laying in the middle of the floor.

She almost loses her hold on Anime #5. It shifts in the not-so-safe crook of her arm, heavy battery tilting it towards the floor in a yearning manner; craving Fullmetal Alchemist laden death- not even Brotherhood. The sorely lacking by comparison 2003 series.

And in that moment, Alphys sees her life flashing before her eyes. A disproportionately large amount involves asking video game characters what they think they’re doing as they take critical damage from an attack, or fall off something mid-parkour segment.

There’s also a lot of yelling at anime. Undyne is there, sometimes. Yelling during those occasions is consistently topped off with smooches.

God. She didn’t do much with her life (outside of building a ghost a body and lying about it to become the Royal Scientist and accidentally turning dozens of monsters into horrific amalgamations as she kind of knowingly attempted to play god before almost getting a child killed several times in a last ditch effort to give her life meaning and telling them after all that they had to murder her boss and possibly taking them on a kind of not really cute pity date to an actual dump but that’s not important right now?), but if she had died right now? At least she hooked up with a sexy ass fish lesbian. A fish lesbian who also had a sexy ass.

Eat your heart out, Del Toro.

Practically sprinting the last few feet to the table, Alphys manages not the drop the laptop, at least; even if it still touches down with an overly loud thunk. Gasping, she has to stop for a moment, hands pressed over her rapidly beating heart. Some monsters don’t have the physical ability to have a heart attack- she is not one of them.

“I… I really have to stop having p-pocky for dinner. And uh, lunch.” Breakfast, though. Breakfast is okay. Turning round to plug in the charger, she glares at the instigator of this mishap. The bag, as if sensing her anger, lets out a soft rustle- something inside it settling after being dislodged by her foot. Its two pals sit close by, innocently silent.

“You’re next.” She vows. Slumping down into her chair, Alphys boots up the necessary program- another personal project that would read through the code already on the motherboard, switching out chunks that match exact search parameters with updated loop and branching structures. Once the motherboard is connected, all she has to do is- let it go. There’d be a couple of errors, here and there; there always is, but that’s what error reports are for. Error reports and several live tests of the system. _After_ sleep.

Which left only one more thing before the siren call of her Mew Mew Kissy Cutie deluxe blanket set could claim her.

Humans did not take kindly to monsters looking through their trash. They’d- sort of, maybe discovered that the hard was, back when they’d all stayed in a human hotel for a few weeks. Frisk was such a quiet kid that if anime hadn’t told her otherwise, the volume of human screams would have been-

Um. More shocking?

So, taking out the trash had become more of a torturous act of restrained temptation than anything fun. It was such a waste; so many good things, sitting there, _waiting_ to be fixed, refurbished, stripped for parts-

Ugh. At least there’s no stairs to worry about. If humans had been accommodating about one thing, it was polite requests for apartments on the ground floor of their stupidly tall buildings. Dragging all three bags out at once is a bad idea anyway, since she still has to leave the front door open, but whatever. It’s fine, probably. Looks fine.

She’s too tired to care if it isn’t, locking the door behind her. Passing by the doorway of the lounge room just as Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: the Movie, plays its intro for the seventh time tonight- this morning. In a row.

Time is. Time is in the eye of the beholder. That one, Alphys thinks, curling up under bright pinks colors and dragging Undyne’s pillow to her face, she has to remember to use on Sans, one day. It’s the exact, weird deviation from the norm that he’d get a kick out of.

That night- morning-- day, she dreams about a little white dog. It sits at her dining table, rapidly slapping its tiny paws onto the keys of her laptop, helping itself to the pocky she’d left behind. When it finishes whatever it was doing, it goes on to type up a critical review of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2. The post has one million notes in four hours.

Even Del Toro tweets about it.

* * *

“ **RING RING, NERD!!!** ” Undyne screams. Alphys also screams, a sound that never fails to reach the perfect crescendo of panicked, reptilian squawk, _just_ in time for her to fall out of bed. “THAT WEIRD GUY WHO LIKES GRAPES AND PIANOS IS CALLING! YOU BETTER ANSWER YOUR PHONE, OR I’M GONNA CALL YOU **EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES IN A R-** ”

“O-oh my god, _stop._ ” Alphys groans, slapping at her phone. No more. She loves Undyne, but no more. She’s changing all her ringtones back to Caramelldansen. “Mettaton, it’s too early.”

“Au contraire, darling; it’s 5pm.” He responds crisply. She. Must’ve slapped answer and. Not ignore. Like she’d meant to. “I’m going to assume you were working all night. I’m also going to assume you’re not- I repeat, **not** \- still in the same Hello Kitty nightgown you were wearing three days ago.”

Alphys looks down. Hello Kitty stares back, eyes oddly accusing for two little, black circles.

“C-course not, eheh…”

“Mm.” She can hear him pursing his lips. Why did she even bother giving him the ability to purse his lips? “Well, you can take the next 12 hours to clean yourself up; tomorrow, I’m coming over. And we’re going out for lunch.”

He titters at her groan, hanging up before she can even get a word in edgewise. This is why she’s never making another robot- some sassy ghost would just befriend her and inhabit it, and get unreasonably snarky and adopt insufferable mannerisms and probably become a lifelong friend who calls at unreasonable hours and makes her go to fancy restaurants.

Is it really 5pm though.

Alphys checks her phone. Sure enough, there it is; 5:23pm, proudly displayed at the upper right of the screen. She must’ve been out for at least ten hours…

And she left Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: the Movie, running. Fantastic. She stands up eventually, rummaging through her chest of drawers for that oversized football jersey Undyne says looks cute (on her, specifically), grumbling all the while. It’s not pajamas, technically. She’ll sleep in it tonight, but it’s not.

A shower, a bowl of cereal- that’s it. If he’s expecting her to clean up her act more than that, he’s got another thing coming. Throwing the jersey onto the… still very inviting mattress… Alphys sighs, squinting through the open door, and down the hallway.

Which. Reminds her that seeing is a lot easier when she. Remembers to put on her glasses?

She’s going back to bed.

At 7pm- an hour after giving up on sleep, and a further 55 minutes browsing Undlr (she’s tried the human version before and… never again), hunger finally chases her into the kitchen. A bowl of cereal may not be the gourmet breakfast spread she’d dreamed of having every day on the Surface- but then, daydreams don’t involve hours of prep and washing dishes. Cereal wins, now that the rose-tinted barrier has been shattered.

_“But the J’taime Blossom Hare Hare Snail Flavored Ramune is only available for a limited time!”_ Cries Mew Mew from the lounge room. _“I’m I’m grounded, then… I’ll miss the promotional period! Nyaoooo!!!!”_

Oh god, she loves this episode. It’s the one where Mew Mew gets grounded for being out after curfew but she really wants the limited edition snail flavored ramune but it’s only available for a limited time so she skips class to get it and tries to kiss her teacher to make sure she doesn’t get in trouble and it’s a really great piece of social commentary on how a lot of animes normalize age gaps that… aren’t… legal……

Why is episode 12, season 1 of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie playing, when she never swapped out Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: the Movie?

Clutching her bowl of cereal to her chest (maybe she can- throw it??? If she needs to????) Alphys tiptoes into the lounge room, eyes flicking too and fro as she tries to spot anything- untoward. Out of place. Initially, it’s just the television, and only the television- that’s definitely disc three of her season one collection playing, but unless she’s started astral projecting in her sleep to swap the discs out, she really doesn’t know how. Was it...a break in? Did they just get robbed?

Maybe the robber didn’t have Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: the Movie, so they put another disc on and took the movie and now she’s no longer the proud owner of the complete collection of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie and they’ve stopped producing new copies so she’ll never find another one ever again and she’ll have to spend the rest of her life knowing that SOMEWHERE OUT THERE HER COPY OF MEW MEW KISSY CUTIE: THE MOVIE is being held captive by some UNAPPRECIATIVE JERK WHO DOESN’T PUT IT BACK IN ITS CASE WHICH THEY’VE STORED IN A SINGLE, MESSY SHELF NEXT TO MEW MEW KISSY CUTIE 2 AND THEY DON’T EVEN KEEP THEIR DVDS IN **ALPHABETICAL ORDER, THE ABSOLUTE MADMAN** \--

But uh. The disc is actually. In the case? On top of the dvd player? So, not stolen then. Tapping the edge of her bowl, Alphys forces herself to breathe, watching as Mew Mew sneaks down a pipe from the roof of her school to a truly stunning ost that captures the secretive and tense tone of the scene perfectly.

Maybe she just- doesn’t remember changing it, after all? Contemplating this strange turn of events, Alphys slowly scoops a spoonful of soggy Frosted Flakes into her mouth, moving to sit on the couch.

Except she can’t, because there’s a dog on it. A little white dog. It’s fast asleep…

“O-okay then. Sure?” That’s um. Normal. And not totally weird. She doesn’t recognize the breed, but they kind of look like some of the Canine Unit? Uh- Lesser and Greater dogs. Alphys has this weird inkling she’s seen this dog somewhere else, but- where?

“Well uh. You have good, um, taste? S-so… don’t pee on the couch and you can stay over tonight, I guess.” They’re also...kind of cute. But they don’t look like a stray, so.

Slowly eating her cereal, Alphys stares down at the dog until her spoon starts coming up empty, bowl’s contents emptied to the last, feeble drops of milk. She could sit down next to them, watch a few more episodes, but it kind of feels rude? So she leaves them be, in favor of dumping her bowl into the sink and wandering back to the dining room. She’ll shower in a minute; first, she wants to check that error report, run any additional scripts she’s already got on hand for some of the more common problems which might have shown up.

The laptop’s screen comes to life with a single swipe of her fingers across the trackpad, completion report ready and waiting, as expected.

The lack of errors in said report, though, that’s. Not.

Wow. Uh-” Glancing through the report to find the usual areas she- well, _expects_ to see something wrong, there’s- nothing. Clear. Clear. 100% completion rate. “That’s not actually, um. P-possible?”

Human computers have different versions. Their operating systems, have versions. Scripts changed with time, becoming more streamlined, easier to use and operate. Areas of code became redundant. Eventually, her script always ran into a section of code that was unique to the make or model, and no amount of pre-written script could cover that in one run.

So. What then? What happened?

“H-hang on, let me have, uh, a look at-” Huh. No, it’s all there; she hasn’t accidentally used a botched script or selected the wrong execution to run. So… it’s fine? Or it’s so broken her system doesn’t even recognize how bad it is. Awesome. “...Yeah, okay. I’m not- not even gonna touch that, right now.”

She has to shower first. And once she’s gone to that much effort, she might as well tidy up a little; make the bed, do the dishes. It takes a few more hours, and it’s not nearly as good of a job as Undyne would have done, but it’ll do. The house is cleaner, she’s cleaner- she’d almost say she feels like an actual, functioning monster, eheh…

Not that she’s fooling anyone here, but it’s nice to _feel_ like she could.

And it doesn’t change the fact that she has to deal with this Frankenstein’s monster of a computer she’s created. Preferably before she goes back to bed and conveniently has any excuses to forget about it for another six months.

The kit came with a monitor- one of those big, curved things humans liked to advertise for gaming. It’s whatever- Alphys hooks it up purely for the convenience of already having it in the same room. All put together like this- she has to admit, it _looks_ pretty. The built-in LEDs at the front and sides light up to transition through a rainbow of colors once the systems on.

Which doesn’t mean anything if the rest doesn’t function properly. Startup looks good, though? There’s a moment where the screen goes black, but it comes back fast enough, already at the login page where. There’s already an admin profile set up. It’s not even a generic admin; there’s a name and everything?

“W-who the hell is Toby?”

Did they send her a used motherboard? Mousing over the profile icon (a pretty simple sprite of a dog- cute. Definitely not her work) she really has to wonder if that’s the case- which explains why her script broke. She never wiped the system, so who even knows what files mangled the entire process.

Great. Just- great. Exhaling sharply, Alphys slumps back in her chair. All that work for- nothing, really. She’s going to have to start at the beginning, do it all over again.

...But, before she does.

“It can’t hurt to just- peek, right? For science.” This Toby person obviously didn’t want their stuff anymore- and if they left any personal details on there, she was deleting it all anyway, so she was practically doing them a favor?

If there was anything on there. Maybe it’s just a test profile some programmer was using and forgot to delete. Which means-

“Which means it’s even more for science. Yeah!” A little more reassured (she’s already been called up for breaking the most important ethical laws of scientific research; adding breaches of privacy really isn’t part of her future plans) Alphys takes the leap, left-clicking with an exaggerated flourish that leaves her leaning back haphazardly, hand raised above her head.

Once again, the screen goes black- and stays that way, folder icon after folder icon loading into existence on a pitch black background that is. Covered. With folder icons.

“Holy shit.”

This Toby person had literally never heard of My Documents, had they? Some of the icons (most of them) are wedged so close together that she can’t even read the titles, it’s ridiculous.

“Wow.” Alphys says. This is- something. Overwhelming, kind of? Really messy and bad? “Thanks, I guess? I hate it?”

Oh boy, does she hate it. Trying to parse what she’s looking at is bad enough, but what about the _contents?_ Opening one at random, at least she finally sees the title; Hemisphere. There’s only two folders inside; named appropriated as Northern and Southern. Okay, so if she drills into Northern she’ll get-?

A list of countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Is this- some kind of catalog?

“Oh, c-cool. I mean, Google exists. And Wikipedia? But- cool.” She minimizes the folder window, opening another. This one’s Weather, apparently- and boy, it sure does have a few more folders inside of it. Clouds is one. Clouds sounds good. In she goes.

More folders. Cumulus, Cirrus, Contrail… she’s beginning to get the picture. Next drill, and she actually does get the picture- a lot of pictures. _Spr_cumulus1_ sits neatly at the very top of her find; one jpg file of millions. Millions in- a single file.

“W-wow, Toby. You really are a newb.” This deep in, it’s starting to get kind of- buggy? She’s not even sure if these images could be opened- the destination path is even longer than she thought it should be, even though she thought she’d only drilled in three times? She lets out a soft titter, a brief moment of superiority immediately overwhelmed by intense guilt at being so mean to someone who clearly just- liked whatever this...is. Idly, she clicks on _spr_cumulus1,_ just to see if the error message was functioning.

It doesn’t, but something does. The program would be a lot harder to see if it wasn’t for all the icon folders- also pitch black, the only option she’s seeing is the red termination, top right. Still, she waits several moments, just in case. Nothing happens.

“Figures.” Whatever. It’s not a surprise. The only question now is whether she can even be bothered to dig through all this for something more interesting before she wipes the memory, or if she should hurry up and move on with her life.

A loud bark pulls her attention from the monitor, glancing back at the open doorway to the lounge. The- right. The dog. It must’ve woken up. Another, loud yap is enough to have her getting to her feet, suddenly painfully aware that it’s past 10pm, and some of their neighbors aren’t the most understanding of noise at daylight hours. Could one thing tonight just- go smoothly, please?

“Hey. Hey, if you’re spending the night, you’re gonna need to, um. Stop that?” The request is promptly ignored. Sighing, Alphys presses her fingers to the bridge of her snout, moving over to the doorway as she wonders how, exactly, she’s supposed to convey the need for silence. “S-seriously, you’ll get me in trouble. Again. And if you scratched up my Mew Mew dvd, I’ll-”

She comes to a halt. Words are lost entirely as she stands in the doorway, struggling to register what she’s just stumbled into. The little dog is up, alright; running circles around the couch. Growling and barking upwards at the source of its upset- which happens to be a cloud.

Floating up against the ceiling, it’s not really harming anything- there’s no breeze to move it along, so it’s just. Sitting there. It’s just a stationary, fluffy cloud that’s occupying the ceiling of her lounge room.

That’s fine.

“Hey, p-puppy? Uh, come over here.” Whatever else they may be, they’re a good dog, trotting over when they’re called- albeit with one, last warning growl at the cloud that’s occupying the ceiling of her lounge room.

The cumulus cloud.

Crouching down, Alphys scoops the dog into her arms, before backing up slowly. Back out the door, into the kitchen dining area. One step to the left, and she can’t see it anymore. Like it doesn’t exist? The dog pants loudly, seemingly content with staying calmly in her hold.

Now that she’s getting a proper look at them, they do have a collar on, actually. There’s even a name tag. Craning her head to the side, Alphys attempts to catch a glimpse of a name- maybe even a phone number, if she’s lucky.

No number, but there is a name.

It’s Toby.

Slowly, Alphys puts the dog down. They sit, tail wagging furiously as they look up at her with sparkling black eyes- it almost feels like they’re laughing at her. She takes a step to the right. The cloud is still there.

The cumulus cloud that looks just like the thumbnail on the computer, that’s run by Toby. Who happens to be a dog.

As if sensing danger, Toby flops onto their side- just as Alphys lets out a blood-curdling shriek.

The sound continues for a good ten minutes.

* * *

 

“Helloooo Alphys; I hope you know I’m in the middle of taping for my talk show, so you better make this quick-”

“GOD IS A DOG AND HE PROGRAMMED ALL OF EXISTENCE ONTO MY COMPUTER AND I SUMMONED A CLOUD INTO MY LOUNGE ROOM AND I THINK IT’S MELTING ONTO THE COUCH AND GOD KEEPS TRYING TO GET TUMMY RUBS AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.”

“...You know, most people simply _ask,_ when they want someone to come over.”

* * *

 

 

 


End file.
